Foosball is associated with the bar, with 22 players to touch the ball, with wood, metal, and play. But, in recent years, foosball has left the bar to enter a living room, an office, or even a designer terrace, with touches of sophistication and with players (male or female) different from the traditional ones. RS Barcelona champions this transformation of game elements into pieces marked by design and elegance, which started with foosball tables and now include ping-pong tables, billiards, and furniture: “We are artists of the game,” as the family business defines itself.
“The art of play lies in finding the balance between design, aesthetics, and fun,” defend RS Barcelona, which takes the city as its hallmark and as a source of inspiration for its art-made-game pieces—or vice versa. However, its origin is not behind a foosball table, but the company has its seed in an unexpected environment: the metal trade. Specifically, in a small sheet metal workshop in Viladecans.
Everything started there in 1975, when Rafael Rodríguez decided to undertake a business dedicated to metalwork. For years, the company manufactured parts for third parties, an activity that allowed consolidating the trade and transmitting it to the next generation. His sons, Rafael and Sergio, grew up among steel sheets, presses, and welds. However, a moment came when manufacturing for others was no longer enough, and creativity began to seek other avenues of expression.
That path arrived in 2006 in the form of a foosball table. The Rodríguez brothers decided to reinterpret an object rooted in popular culture to take it out of its most usual spaces: they wanted it to be able to share space with a designer sofa, be part of a hotel, become the center of an office, or even be a protagonist aboard a ship, as pieces with their own identity.
The turning point came shortly after, and by chance. The soul of Vinçon, Fernando Amat, was seduced by the design of that first foosball table. The one baptized as RS2 was installed in the showcase of what was then the design benchmark of Passeig de Gràcia, which gave it an unforeseen visibility that marked the firm's next steps.
After delving into the world of design —hand in hand with studios like Stone Designs, which they met at the Salone del Mobile in Milan—, the firm expanded its catalog: foosball tables were joined by ping-pong tables, billiards, and unique furniture pieces, which build a universe grouped under one concept: Intense Living. In it, the brand conceives objects as facilitators of experiences, with products designed to generate moments and encounters.
Barcelona as inspiration
In RS Barcelona's way of understanding design, the city occupies a central place. In fact, the firm is inspired by its streets, markets, panots, popular festivals, correfocs, and an industrial legacy that coexists with modernism and creativity.
The relationship with the city, however, goes beyond inspiration, and is also palpable in the manufacturing process. Although the company has grown to export its products to dozens of countries, it manufactures locally. In early 2024, it opened a new headquarters in Olesa de Montserrat, where it located its production and storage plant, its offices, and a showroom, which joins the concept store it has on Còrsega street in Barcelona, and the warehouse it has in the United States, where RS Barcelona landed in 2010.
In addition to inspiration and local production, another pillar marks the company's relationship with Barcelona. The company collaborates with entities such as the Pediatric Cancer Center Barcelona of Hospital Sant Joan de Déu, the Casa dels Xuklis of AFANOC, and the Rafa Nadal Foundation, with the donation of game tables. All framed within the "commitment to bring play and its transformative power to all areas."
This transformative power took the form of a foosball player. Or, in this case, a female player. In 2011, it created the first foosball table with female players, as an "aspiration, a declaration of intent, and a firm commitment to equality." The female player figures, with the same proportions as the male ones, have the same precision, power, and resistance, representing "complete equality."
“We have always believed in the power of sport and play as an instrument of cohesion and inclusion, and a link between people,” defends the company, which extols the capacity of play to transform and catalyze change. It is the same philosophy that it embodies in its pieces, marked by a unique identity and contemporary design; the same one that led Rafa and Sergio to take the badge further and put it into play, and with which it continues to champion that concept of intense living that still drives the firm.